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get a lot of teenage weddings. Of course, they likely aren't going to fund marriage counseling and daycare for all the babies...or even education for that matter. But, for the unthinking who want or need to be told what to do, it's certainly a winning strategy since not having sex is an effective method of contraception.

Good thing they're not Catholic as the pope issued an encyclical a few years back telling widows [ mind not widowers ] that sex with another husband was amoral. It seems like religions go

But not only. Advocating chastity as the only contraception method leads as well to delegitimize delivering information about sex to teenagers. That's a sure way to spread unwanted pregnancies, abortions and sexual diseases. And of course all this craze about sex being bad is just going to give another boost to an already too powerful porn industry. Not mentioning prostitution. Even Paul was saying that chastity can't be enforced on everyone.

Yes, people can go too far to extremes, but consider this gem from the article: "During the last few years Planned Parenthood itself has been forced to mention abstinence as a strategy for avoiding pregnancy and disease." Oh my gosh, you mean you can avoid pregnancy and STDs by avoiding SEX? What will they think of next? I can't even imagine what kind of warped logic it takes for anyone to find it remarkable that Planned Parenthood would mention abstinence.

The problem with abstinence-only education is that it leads children to avoid speaking and asking questions to their parents, who (in an ideal world) should be the primary and only teachers and authorities for that kind of private and intimate thing. (And you seem to agree with me on this point. Schools are just an expedient.) And usually abstinence-only education means no education about sex at all. (At least that's how it works in the Catholic families in southern Europe.) And without family or schools, t

The problem with abstinence-only education is that it leads children to avoid speaking and asking questions to their parents

Not always, no. That is dependent on the parents.

And usually abstinence-only education means no education about sex at all.

The fault of the parents.

And I think we agree on this, but the problem is that I see no logical line from "the parents are shirking their responsibility" to "therefore the government should do it." It's the wrong direction. When people are not required to live up to their obligations because the government does it for them, then they do not. This is the case with charitable giving, sex education, and a host of other social issues the government intrudes upon.

And actually, come to think of it, I don't think abstinence-only education -- in the schools, anyway -- "leads children to avoid speaking and asking questions to their parents." I think that will be the case regardless of what the schools teach, as long as the parents are not initiating the conversation with their kids, teaching their kids. And if they are talking to their kids, then there's no need for sex education in the schools anyway.

I do agree with you about "legal contract," however, I am speaking of the religious institution of marriage more than the civil one: my child will be taught that the place of sex is between a man and a woman who are committed to each other, for life, in the eyes of God. Whether or not there is a legal contract is merely incidental to that important relationship.

And while many of the people in that article TorgoX linked to said silly things, the one thing that struck me was the girl who said society wants you to be a "whore." It's true. Casual sex, using sex to get what you want, using other people for sex, self-gratification, it's all glorified. Sex shouldn't be about any of that, it should be about -- as you say -- love, which means putting another person before yourself.

Anyway, sex is so fucked up in our society, and I just don't see passing the baton to some random teacher as any sort of a solution. With the increase in sex education, we certainly haven't seen a decrease in teenage sexual activity or pornography. The only solution is parenting, and I, for one, will take on my own responsibilty for myself, not pass it on to whomever society puts next in line.